Page 38 of Before Their After

“What is he talking about?” Cael asked, staring at me with a different, more favorable punishment if I didn’t comply.

I could always leave. I thought about it on every mission she sent me on outside our borders. In the end, I always returned. Where else could I go? Everywhere. Anywhere. That was the answer. I could disappear without a trace tomorrow and Finley would never find me.

It was the entire point of the role she’d forced me into taking, preying on the sinister thoughts that lingered in the back of my mind. She saw the darkness that was instilled in me from a young age and nurtured it, molding me into her little pet.The Bloodhound, or so they called me.

Truth was, I didn’t leave because I was a coward. What would I have left to feel if Finley did not exist? The highs and lows of life would no longer be, only lows would remain and I wasn’t sure if I could handle that. Not with my own promises I’d made to Evander and Tiago in the wake of their deaths.

Finley was rash, occasionally cruel when she got worked up. Some of her morals were questionable, sure, but in the end her actions boiled down to one thing; passion. She only wanted to form a settlement full of survivors and to do that, we had to survive. That goal had never changed for as long as I’d known her.

She sighed, tucking her hair behind her ear at the sight of me prepared to reveal her secrets. Finley could do her best, but nothing would hurt more than knowing that my best friend, my only friend, had died by my hand. My power.

“I was going to tell you when I was able to get it to work.”

“Getwhatto work?” Cael pressed.

“Collective conscious,” Finley explained what she was attempting to achieve. “If I get the smartest and brightest in one place, create a network that merges into a single mind, we can achieve the impossible. St. Cloud will be unstoppable.”

“This mind being whose, Finley?”

“Hers,” I grumbled in response.

She glared at me. “Well, who else would it be? Our people will be better for it.”

Eyes dark as night widened in horror. “No. It’s not right. These are people, Finley. Innocent children!”

“There is no innocence in this world, daddy, not anymore. It’s a small sacrifice to make for the greater good.” She reached for her father, halting his retreat as he stepped away from her in fear. Finley recognized it for what it was—her father seeing her as everyone else did for the first time. Her bottom lipped wobbled in defense the way it always did when she knew she was fighting a losing battle. “It’s a good plan. It can work. Think of all the problems we have. Our people could be set for life! Two minds are better than one.”

Cael’s head moved from side-side, his eyes scanning the room until they landed on me. I stared back at him, my expression no doubt void of any emotion. I disagreed with Finley’s method, but I was in no place to interfere further. I’d done my part. Saved who I needed to save and killed who I didn’t. I had to think about myself too. The repercussions of my actions. If I gave up this life, this home, then everything was all for nothing. Thentheydied for nothing.

“You can’t be okay with this?” he asked me, pleading with me to try to reason with a woman who didn’t take kindly to peer feedback.

I fought to remain neutral no matter how much I wanted to meet his stare with a gaze of understanding. I’d felt myself getting attached at the onset of our working relationship, rightafter the war. His eyes trailed down to the rings I was teasing along my fingers then back to my face. Regret washed over his features.

Of course I wouldn’t say anything, I’d been an experiment for Finley too. Still was with her having yet to find the solution to the problem she had promised to solve. I was no fool. She could if she wanted to. But that was not how Finley worked. Without power, without an edge over those around her, she would unravel. If I didn’t follow her orders, she would take what little control I did have.

Cael cleared his throat, glancing back in her direction. “One more,” he said, making his way to the door. He stood there for a moment, taking a deep sigh with his back to us. “One more and if it doesn’t work, we end this, Finley.”

“You know, you should consider yourself lucky.” A massive Cane Corso lurked at my heels, jaws snarling and lined with drool.

Extended assignments had their perks. The ability to bring Suckerpunch along was, by far, the best one. I’d found him as a puppy right outside the city and in a rare lapse of caution, the little devil had taken on a zombie in my defense. He’d barely been the size of my head at the time but his heart had been mighty. The heart of a warrior, a survivor. So I’d kept him against Finley’s wishes.

In the center of a bed in a dilapidated room, a terrified, sorry excuse of a man trembled uncontrollably. I suppose I should have been thankful to him. The weeks tracking him down had given me the space to clear my head. Figure out what I wanted. If he hadn’t been on the run, who knew if the opportunity todo so would arise?Running from the Bloodhound, I laughed to myself. An ironic name considering Finley hated dogs.

He’d stolen from Finley and Finley hated thieves.Use your best discretion, she’d advised for dealing with him. The designs he’d taken with him had been classified—a project she’d been working on for ages. Two hours and a very long, drawn out round of torture later and he’d revealed he’d burn them.

“Wh-why?” he stammered out, the blood along his nail bed finally clotting to a halt.

I sighed, taking a seat in the chair directly across from him. “Because over the last few days, I’ve decided I don’t want to do this anymore.”

Venting to a dead man was freeing. The comfort of knowing your words would be lost to the soil, buried with the dead.

“You’re not going to kill me?” A pitiful amount of hope pooled in his eyes. Nothing could have made me want to kill him more. Hope was a stupid fucking thing to have in the world in which we lived.

Laughing, I gave Suckerpunch a pat on the head. “I didn’t say that, now, did I?” Suckerpunch grinned up at me, the drool around his mouth dripping onto the moldy carpet.

The man’s teeth clattered, the sound grating the last tendrils of my nerves. He winced as the sheets touched the sensitive skin on the cauterized wounds of his missing toes. “Then what do you mean?”

“You’re my last kill,” I said, my words clipped as if it couldn’t be more obvious. “Can’t keep doing this. Guess you can say the old hound is going into retirement.”

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